Unresolvable? slow video & stalls Dell Laptop

[ImnoGuru]

Hello & thank you for looking at my problem.

My Dell laptop has a problem with video stalling??? Then I move the mouse & the video starts again for a short while & stops again. It has been doing this for a very long time. ( Over 2 years actually).
Even when I open a new window, the graphics are slow to load & freezes until I move the mouse continually to speed things up.
It has a lot of stalls & freezes that restarts any loading of data when the mouse is moved.
It is an old unit now but its all I have that is somewhat reliable.

This system is Dell inspiron 1545, Intel Core 2 Duo T6500, 3 GB RAM, 32 bit O/S, Windows Vista Home Premium SP2.

I have tried the Dell website & gone through their system diagnosis reports with no joy. Everything they tested was OK.
I did at one stage find there was a report of a mouse driver problem for Dell units & followed that up as best I could. Again.. No real joy.

I ran WinDirStat & saw that the drive was very full, so I transferred 1/4 of the drive ( about 90 odd GB ) to another drive thinking it might just be to much for the Dell drive to cope with. All this with no improvements.

Can someone please help diagnose what the problem might be & give me some insights as to what I might be able to do to fix it.

Many thanks ImnoGuru 

[Geek-9pm]

Here is something to think  about.
Backup.
Backup is not just about having a copy of the software.
You may want to have a backup of all the hardware.

You might have failing hardware.  No amount of driver installs will fix it.

The Dell laptop yu have is a 15 inch laptop and has the Pentium Dual Core.
Many of these on for sale on eBay for under $200 and most vendors have some kind of warranty policy. And with legal OEM copy of Windows 7,which is still supported fully by Microsoft.
Look for:
Dell Inspiron 1545 15 inch  Laptop  Intel Pentium Dual Core Windows 7.

So, maybe it is time for a replacement.
The advantage of buying duplicate unit is then you a have spare parts. 
EDIT: That model is also on Amazon by vendors.

[soybean]

Running a speed test via speedtest.net might be worth doing as a troubleshooting step.  Would be good to know whether your internet speed from your ISP is a factor in this problem.

[patio]

Is it the original HDD ? ?

[ImnoGuru]

Thank you for your input Geek-9pm.
I certainly have a few backups on alternate hard drives & can see where your going with the potential of failing hardware, something that I seriously considered myself given the age of the laptop. It was the very reason I have done all the Dell diagnosis tests.

Replacement is a preferred option, however if I had ANY money I wouldnt hesitate buying a new/secondhand unit. Unfortunately $$$ is a decisive problem.

I have run multiple speed tests soybean, but Im in Australia & I think we are rated at somewhere  lower than Lithuania for internet speeds. Remember the little blue bar to show progress with dialup modems, well thats about the level of my ADSL 2+ speeds right now. Even with our upgrading to the governments "fraudband" ( in maybe 3 to 5 years ) I dont expect to view any movies via internet connections any time soon.

The hard drive is original patio. I ran WinDirStat, to find out if it was too full to allocate data to the free space & as I said, I removed about 25% hoping that might help.

I do believe that failing hardware is the highest potential, maybe the video card? or motherboard issues, mainly because the computer responds to mouse movement or the mousepad touch.

I do have a replacement drive I think may be suitable if the connections & size etc. are compatible.

Do you think I should change the original out for that one, to test if there is a change in performance?

If I do swap it out will that cause any recognition problems?

It seems I could open a big can of worms going down that path.

Thank you for your replies. ImnoGuru.

[patio]

FraudBand

I love it !   

[Geek-9pm]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fraudband
fraudband
A term coined by an English Sixth Form student by the name of Henry on May 19th, 2006. The term is used to describe a broadband ISP or broadband service that may appear to be of high quality but, in actual fact, fails to meet even the lowest of expectations.

[patio]

Don't think it needed clarification...

[Geek-9pm]

ImnoGuru,
You will want to know if the issue is in hardware or software.
It may be both. Here is what I mean. Hard drive failure sometimes is a progressive decline in performance reliability. The built-in low-level recovery tricks the drive firmware uses can make the problem worse. A bad read from the drive may be written back to the drive in an attempt to 'fix' a bad sector. That can happen hundreds of times and few of those 'fixes' will be bad. It happens. (But more often the drive hardware does a good job.)

That kind of thing can not be 'fixed' by a few edits to the registry.

The test and the cure is to try a new hard drive and install the OS over again to see if that makes a notable improvement in performance. Is so, then you have to finish up the install and get your programs and data on to the new drive.

Here is an alternative method used by those of merger resources.  Make some free space on the drive you have. Enough to allow a new install of the same OS. This is not harder that it sounds. It is exactly as hard as it sounds.

When  yu ask Windows to install again on a new partition, it sets up the loader so you have a choice of which copy version of Windows you  want. yu can thne try the new install ans see have it does. Hopefully you now a re using part of the hard drive that is still in good shape. I have seen this.
I have used this method  and sometimes helps.   

[BC_Programmer]

From what I can find the Laptop was released in 2009, that puts the Hard drive in at 8 years old. If nothing else I'd at least check using tools like CrystalDiskInfo, which will show you if the drive knows it is in trouble or failing. (It can't show you if it is A-OK, as even if everything checks out it could be failing)

[ImnoGuru]

Thanks for the replies one & all. I have tried all the things I can to resolve this & thanks to BC_Programmer for the link to CrystalDiskInfo.

My poor old computer is in the sad house so I decided to bite the bullet & get a new computer.

I moved house recently & now most of the stress is gone I decided I deserve an upgrade.

My reward for working so hard.
Many thanks to you all. ImnoGuru.